Jetta Frost

The Dynamics of Motivation in New Organizational Forms

This paper discusses the impact of the dynamics of motivation on new organizational forms that are suited to forge value-creating knowledge transfers in teams and between organizational units and functions. Our aim is to develop the management of motivation as a source of distinctive firm competences. We argue that motivation is an endogenous variable and introduce it as a crucial link into the theory of the firm. Balancing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation helps to overcome social dilemmas in firms that are not solvable by hierarchical authority. Integrating the dynamics of motivation is a step to a more comprehensive theory of organization. It links organizational economics to the knowledge-based perspective.

Managing Motivation, Organization and Governance

To a high degree Simon’s work is identified with the introduction of “Bounded rationality” into economics and with the behavioral theory of the firm. Today, bounded rationality has become a conventional footnote in almost every economic treatment. However, it often does not do justice to Simon’s far-reaching ideas. Much has been neglected, in particular Simon’s emphasis on motivation, including workers’ identification with their firm. In our paper, we focus on these aspects neglected in organizational economics. We seek to complement them with an approach, which makes motivation an endogenous variable to management. At the same time, we introduce a dynamic relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation into the theory of the firm. The management of these two kinds of motivation becomes a crucial task, particularly when production is knowledge intensive.

Corporate commons: sustaining competitiveness through public goods in multidivisional firms

Corporate parenting strategies refer to the managements ability to sustain the competitiveness of multidivisional firms. During the last decade, infusing elements of market governance and control, thus fostering internal entrepreneurship, became the most popular corporate parenting strategy. We argue that this corporate parenting initiative leads to market failures within multidivisional firms. Internal market failures hinder the creation and transfer of resources with firm-specific public good character. We label those resources corporate commons. The aim of our paper is, firstly to identify the spectrum of such firm-specific public goods according to their degree of non-excludability and of non-rivalry. Secondly, we uncover the role of corporate commons in the competitiveness of multidivisional firms. Using a case example from the telecommunication industry, we argue that successful corporate parenting strategies are those that encourage the provision of corporate commons across business units to sustain a firms competitiveness.

Overcoming knowledge dilemmas: governing the creation, sharing and use of knowledge resources

Knowledge governance involves overcoming knowledge dilemmas. These dilemmas result from the public-good characteristics of knowledge: non-rivalry and non-excludability. The aim of this paper is to provide a framework in which a repertoire of governance modes and mechanisms is developed and evaluated according to the public-good characteristics of knowledge resources. Based on the theories of public good, social dilemma and organisation, we derive propositions for effectively governing the creation, sharing and use of knowledge resources. Relying on a case study in the telecommunications industry with data from 42 narrative interviews, we mix theoretical reasoning with qualitative data analysis in order to specify the theoretically derived propositions. Our results show how the two actor-oriented characteristics cognitive proximity and procedural adherence influence the choice of different governance modes.

Unmasking Collective Corruption: The Dynamics of Corrupt Routines

This paper contributes to the development of conceptual work on collective corruption in the private sector. Based on a routines-as-practice perspective, we conceptualize collective corruption as routines which are established patterns of organizational actions that are made up of rules as their basic building blocks, the interpretation of these rules in the context of an organizational framework and the actual observable performance patterns. Drawing on 24 interviews with representatives of law enforcement authorities, auditing and law firms, non-profit organizations and anti-corruption units in the public sector, we provide a framework that combines theoretical reasoning with qualitative data analysis in order to describe the dynamics of corrupt routines. Our results disclose their main characteristics and highlight how the specificity of rules, lack of control, the power to influence subjective understandings and actions as well as group processes influence the relations between rules, their interpretation and performances and, thus, give rise to corrupt routines.

Professional and Organizational Commitment in Universities: from Judgmental to Developmental Performance Management

Adopting New Public Management in higher education implies a stronger reliance on performance management as an output control process. Performance management sets the tone in the university working context and seeks to increase the quality and quantity of scholars’ output. Focusing on quantitative outcomes, however, such performance measurement can lead to unintended behavior on the part of individual employed scholars. Drawing on qualitative case material, we demonstrate that performance measurement results in a loss of organizational commitment if it is perceived as judgmental. Scholars view themselves as being more committed to their disciplinary invisible college and thus to their profession. Our findings indicate that universities would do well to understand the impacts of professional commitment oriented towards invisible colleges on performance management. Thus, performance management should be enhanced as a developmental type so that professional and organizational commitment can be aligned. We outline its characteristics and how universities can strengthen it.

From Voluntary Collective Action to Organized Collaboration? The Provision of Public Goods in Pluralistic Organizations

Our study examines the relationship between voluntary collective action, organized collaboration, and the provision of public goods in pluralistic organizations. Using German higher education as a context, we investigate whether specialized central support structures contribute to performance in three fields of action: the training of young scientists, internationalization, and gender diversity. The findings indicate that organized collaboration may lead to improved performance in the training of young scientists and gender diversity. Conversely, voluntary collective action enhances internationalization. Based on our results, we suggest that, depending on the field of action, voluntary collective action and organized collaboration are substitutes with regard to performance. Our study contributes to the literature on collective action and to research on public organizations in pluralistic institutional environments. It also informs higher education research and policy on the effectiveness of new organizational designs based on centralized and specialized support structures at universities.

Multi-Level Governance in Universities: Strategy, Structure, Control

Governing universities is a multi-level as well as a highly paradoxical endeavor. The featured studies in this book examine critically the multifaceted repercussions of changing governance logics and show how contradictory demands for scholarly peer control, market responsiveness, public policy control, and democratization create governance paradoxes. While a large body of academic literature has been focusing on the external governance of universities, this book shifts the focus on organizations’ internal characteristics, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of the changing governance in universities. The book follows exigent calls for getting back to the heart of organization theory when studying organizational change and turns attention to strategies, structures, and control mechanisms as distinctive but interrelated elements of organizational designs. We take a multi-level approach to explore how universities develop strategies in order to cope with changes in their institutional environment (macro level), how universities implement these strategies in their structures and processes (meso level), and how universities design mechanisms to control the behavior of their members (micro level). As universities are highly complex knowledge-based organizations, their modus operandi, i.e. governing strategies, structures, and controls, needs to be responsive to the multiplicity of demands coming from both inside and outside the organization.

Motivation and Knowledge as Strategic Resources

This chapter will explain why motivation and knowledge management are key strategic resources when it comes to the competitiveness of a company. In addition, it will outline the latest strategy research developments, define the characteristics of strategic resources and examine the relationship between knowledge and motivation.

Linking exploration and exploitation: how a think tank triggers a managerial innovation

In this article, we focus on think tanks as intermediaries between exploration and exploitation. To underpin our theoretical arguments on their linking function between both domains, we conducted a case study. The object of investigation is a think tank which has played a decisive role in the modernisation of the German public sector. The managerial innovation it has triggered is a control model which departs from the principles of bureaucracy by shifting emphasis from input to output control. We visualise the links between exploration and exploitation by analysing citations of reports and journal articles in which the think tank outlines this model. Three stages of the discourse on New Public Management (NPM) in Germany are distinguished, resulting in a remarkable diffusion rate in administrative practice.